


No Harmless Visit

by Hawkbringer



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Abrupt Ending, Banter, Fluff and Angst, Flying, Frottage, Kissing, M/M, Pitch and Jack's Ice Sculpture in Antarctica, Sensory Deprivation, Teasing, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, Winter, bittersweet connection, fear kink, running from your problems, they're so touch-starved they're practically virgins, wonder and awe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23238022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: Jack Frost accidentally stares too long at a shadowed doorway in a dark alley one winter's night, and Pitch Black recovers some of his power. Mortified by his succumbing to temptation, Jack flees from all dark corners for over a century, until the innocent desire to 'see the stars' from somewhere far from civilization takes him back to Antarctica, where he turned his back on what could have been his closest ally. Pitch Black is never far, and just as eager for company as the little lost ice boy, though he'd never admit it.
Relationships: Jack Frost/Pitch Black
Comments: 1
Kudos: 57





	No Harmless Visit

**Author's Note:**

> origin, may 2016 or earlier. Un-beta'd, so rough-draft format it is. Thank the Great Quarantine of 2020 that this figment saw the light of day at all.

After a long day and night spent in winter-gripped Russia, Jack returns to one of the larger cities, just to watch his handiwork manifest, his joint project with the Wind. Strolling through empty, silent streets, glancing away from the lamplights and reflections on the water, Jack finds himself drawn to a particularly dark and shadowy corner, a doorway with no door. There should be one, he finds himself thinking as he drifts closer, wasn't there one last year? But so many things have changed in a year, so many friends made, at the expense of enemies lost... 

Without trying to stop himself, Jack remembers the underground lair, made of just the same sort of shadowy corners, dark stone, dizzying angles. It's the only place he's never been able to go /back/ to, this whole time since the Uprising. And he's /fine/ with the way things are now, it's /fine/ to be going about his usual duties with more recognition and more allies and more /power/, yes... But it could be better. /He/ could be better... He could have /more/, if only he could go back there, to that echoing chamber with a wrought-iron globe that was probably at that /moment/ flickering with borrowed light, letting the Boogeyman know only how strong the /Guardian's/ power was, not the strength of /his/. 

Thinking possessive thoughts about cold and darkness, Jack continues to draw that dark and shadowed lair closer in his thoughts, and because he IS a Guardian, his thoughts possess power. The empty doorway looms closer than ever, and he begins to see a swirling portal of pure blackness come to life between himself and that vexing void.

But because the shadows lengthen, bending far beyond what Jack would usually see, he wavers, unsure if he was seeing things that were really there, unsure he wanted to make the leap and /believe/ that Pitch could find him like this, bait him like this. The fear of knowing what /believing/ in Pitch could do to him rises like fire in the back of his throat, unfitting, clawing with sharp talons, something completely alien to his element. The metallic taste of cortisol, not innocent adrenaline. The creeping taste of fear.

It would be a confusing jumble of factors as he stood looking at that door, that widening portal drawing power from his thoughts - the fear and the lure of that heart-stopping excitement on top, but beneath that, the newly-imposed strictures of being a Guardian that fight with his instincts to pleasure himself, to just do whatever he wants, to seek out 'fun times'. 

But the rules and the strictures don't /hurt/, they don't /contain/, so much as /guide/ him, challenge him, the same way flying through a dense forest is more invigorating, more exciting, than flying through a simple, open field. He can't tell which of the competing voices in his head is /wrong/, because they're both /him/, they're both /right/, and it's... 

It's why he's standing, feet frozen to the ground upon hearing just the faintest hint of that enigmatic voice, whispering around a corner, saying something about what /adults/ might fear. 

Jack wrenches himself away from the shadows and the voice, and goes back to his daily tasks with just a little more violence in the thrusts of his staff than usual.

When the snowstorm Jack recklessly augments that night to get his mind off that cloying, taunting, voice causes the mother of one of his favorite children to die in the night due to the loss of power, he thinks he understands what the snatches of meaning he gleaned from the wind howling near that void had meant.

He doesn't return to Burgess for far, far too long.

After that shame-filled day he accidentally /helped/ Pitch regain a sliver of power, Jack finds himself looking over his shoulder a little more often, sticking to the city streets at night. It's not that he doesn't see Manny anymore, of course he does. It's not that he's /lonely/, it's just... sometimes he misses the stars. 

When the ache gets to be just a little too much, Jack concocts the great idea to go to the brightest /and/ most deserted place he can think of to watch the stars again. Antarctica, as far from artificial light as it is possible to get... which also happens to also be very far from every Guardian he knows. 

The North is plenty empty too, but... He just doesn't feel like dealing with the hustle and bustle of North's workshop, this close to Christmas. That is what he tells himself.

He feels sick when he realizes that the Wind, which never sends him anywhere he hasn't asked it to, deposits him within stumbling distance of the crevice where he'd truly hit rock-bottom, pieces of his broken staff thrown in after him and abandoned to his fate with only a bedraggled, shivering Junior Tooth Fairy for company. 

The pit drops out of his stomach when he realizes that if he turns around -- And he does. Impulse control is still a concept that sits awkwardly in his brain.

It's still there. 

He scoffs at himself for thinking that it wouldn't be. 

Shuffling slowly up to it, Jack hesitantly puts out a hand to the dark and beautiful monstrosity of his native ice and the black, perverted Dream Sand that became such varied things under the will of its wielder... Until those same Nightmares turned on /him/ in the end, attuned only to the scent of fear. 

Sandy hasn't been here to reclaim these frozen remnants; this continent contains no children he might send dreams to. (And the line of twilight, where he dwells, is a funny thing, this close to the edge of the world. Some days, the sun doesn't set /at all/.)

And so it stands. Twisted and monumental, an unmoved silent testament to Jack's own rage and pain... and fear.

The breath shivers as it leaves Jack Frost's lungs, and he even rubs his forearms as it does so. It's been three /hundred/ years since he last felt cold.

Realizing all of a sudden /why/ he hadn't gone to the Arctic Circle if he only wanted to see the stars again - North's workshop doesn't put off /that/ much light - Jack's knees simply give out beneath him and he sits down /hard/ on the ice. The wind subtly curls around his form, silently asking what is wrong. Jack doesn't even hear it.

He's here because he wants to see Pitch. 

After all these years... Having fallen into the routine, watched his first believer grow up and pass on stories and never once doubt, becoming beloved to more and more children with each passing year, their awe and gratitude fueling his power...

Jack softly murmurs to himself, not caring there is no soul present to hear his words, "After all these years..."

As a land of ice and snow, cloud and sun, there are few shadows in Antarctica. At least, not until the sun goes down. With the planet's North turned away from the sun and ensconced in the beginnings of winter, it would be hours hence that anything like sundown would come to /this/ continent. But Pitch made his home beneath the rocks of the Earth, and Jack had once followed the pull of a true believer halfway across the /world/. Pitch will have no trouble finding /him/.

Unable to stand the unceasing stare of the sun for a single second longer, Jack turns his back on the manifestation of his and Pitch Black's similarities, their torment and pain. Silently, Jack drops into the nearby crevice. 

Gripping his staff tight, Jack's eyes dart around for a suitably dark corner to concentrate on as he musters his courage to attempt something he never has before. A summoning. 

Deliberating on the fact that he's not really one for fanfare or pomp, Jack resolutely settles on closing his eyes and /thinking/ as loudly as he can. With all the blunt-fingered finesse of a kindergartener with a pot of finger paint, Jack /summons/. 

Astonishingly, it works perfectly well, if the pleased, wordless purr and frighteningly-cold finger trailing down the nape of his neck are to be believed. Jack's back arches sharply and he attempts to whirl around - but no one is there.

"Quit playing games!" he shouts, beginning his first real conversation in /days/. 

/Ahh,/ says the voice that haunts /all/ nightmares, /I doubt you really want me to do that, Jack./ And the way his name sounds, rolled off /that/ tongue in /that/ voice nearly takes Jack's breath away. 

Unconsciously compensating by escalating it to angry huffs, Jack tilts his staff offensively, and lets all his confusion and all his angst soar right away from him, because /this/ is simple. /This/ is rage.

He ignores the fact that he is smiling as he brings the staff down hard against the ground. In /his/ hands, its petrified-ice state makes it invulnerable, merely splashing up a frozen half-crater of ice around the impact. From the corner of his eye, he spies the way the shadows flee; he gives chase.

Pitch doesn't do him the honor actually /appearing/ for whole hours, and while Jack doesn't tire, really, doesn't need to sleep, running in circles around the ice sculpture of his nightmares does nothing for his patience. 

After the sixth time Pitch's barely-there silhouette flickers across its surface with hands outstretched in a caressing manner that makes Jack nearly incandescent with something like (jealousy) rage, he digs his heels in and tauntingly shouts, "You wanna run your creepy hands all over that thing, you're gonna have to actually /come out/, you know!"

/Come out and play, Jack? But we're having such fun like this!/ the voice on the wind breezily needles back. 

/Two can play /that/ game,/ Jack viciously decides, and nonchalantly leans back on his staff, looking for all the world like he's given up the chase. "Maybe /you/ are. But I'm getting kind of bored. Chasing a shadow for three hours," he underestimates, "I'm starting to wonder if you're even powerful enough to /make it/ here." 

The hiss that answers that sounds different than the others, and Jack has barely a second to think that maybe he's crossed a line somewhere, before the shadows get him. Pitch's flat sillouhette peels right off the devastatingly beautiful sculputure like a rabbit made of ice, and rushes toward the wide-eyed Jack, black and featureless as night, a shadow come to life. 

He's startled, but only truly frightened when the apparition proves its corporeality and seizes him by the wrist and flies both of them into the shadowed crevice where the ground has gone black. Sails them down and down until gritty yellow light slants in sideways over his face and Jack screws his eyes shut, expecting a hard impact against grey stone. 

He collides with something soft instead. 

"Oof," the thing he's landed on huffs above his head, body-warm arms winding around his back. In the miliseconds before Jack opens his eyes, he doesn't feel any fear.

As soon as /does/ open his eyes, of course, he feels mostly adrenaline, or something like it, pouring through his veins, shocking him faster than his too-slow pulse could possibly have managed. 

He wonders for the barest moment, as he scrambles to his feet and runs, if it could possibly be all mental, if he's just /thinking/ he's afraid. And that thought slows his frenzied rabbit-fast escape long enough for the master of this underground lair to catch him. 

And /catch him/ he does, with an almost gleeful shout and hands that tighten too reluctantly and linger too long. Jack doesn't struggle in his grasp as the Nightmare King at his back lifts him from the ground by his shoulders. 

Jack turns his head slightly to the side, barely able to make eye contact with the taller man. Silent, waiting for Pitch to feel awkward and put him down. 

The shark-grin slides off Pitch's face and he snarls, face contorting and eyes glowing with some infernal magic. Jack's eye widen and he nods respectfully. There's something like pride, something like relief, in the knowledge that Pitch has power enough for these small magics. Then his face twists as his traitorous brain assaults him with imaginings of his favorite children, descendants of his First Believer, twisting in their sleep and whimpering in fear. He turns his head away, a bit disgusted by his respect.

"You're finally giving up the game, /Jack/?" that noxious voice spits like an epithet. "Not so jaunty now your body's on the line?" 

Jack snorts at that, and he knows Pitch can feel it echo through his shoulders.

"No," he retorts, lifting his elbows over his head, making Pitch drop him. He spins in place immediately and the way his ice-blue eyes pierce and pin and hold makes the taller man stop and hold his breath. "I'm here because I /wanna/ be." 

"Wha... /Why?/" The master of night terrors blinks at him, one eye squinting as though Jack had just offered him a plate of raw spinach. Jack grins, something like victory bubbling in his chest at that sign of distrust. Finally, the other man was catching on.

Jack tries his nonchalant shrug, but it's ruined by the grin that hasn't stopped pulling at his lips. "I dunno," he breezily makes up on the spot. "It'd just, been a while. Wanted to check up on you."

Pitch rolls his eyes, /and/ turns his head away, and it's even echoed in his /lips/. Jack's never seen such a perfect expression of contempt. 

"Oh, /please/, Little Lost Child." He says it as though it's the name he uses for Jack in his head, like there's no filter between his mind and his mouth. Jack takes an eager step forward without realizing it. "You haven't been able to tell a lie since the day you were /made/, for all you think yourself a trickster. You're talking to the original, I'll have you know." 

Jack laughs aloud at that, bright eyes fixed on his face and never leaving. "You're older than Lucifer the Lightbringer?" he challenges, remembering one of the stories from his long ago past.

Pitch huffs, canting one hip where he stands like he isn't used to standing still and upright like this for so long. Jack pretends it's because he's wearing him down. "/Hardly./ He was more a leader than I'll ever be, I'll give you that. But did the Lightbringer ever /lie/? He promised his cohorts something on which he couldn't deliver. An all-out assault on the throne of Heaven? Nothing very trickster-y about /that/." 

Jack blinks, actually taken aback. Sincerely curious now, he asks, "What about the trickster Loki? Or that snake in the Garden?" Pitch knows without having to ask which 'garden' Jack means. He shakes his head.

"They're older still. And you're thinking about it all wrong, little one-" His grin returns briefly as he sees the way Jack's eye twitches at the nickname- "I am the embodiment of fear, just as you're the embodiment of winter." He raises one accusing finger and dramatically prods Jack's breastbone. "Winter /existed/ before you did. And fear existed before /me./ Nevertheless, I'll have you know I pre-date all your guardians. I even knew some of them in my past life," he goads. 

Jack's eyes widen but he doesn't rise to the bait, narrows them very shortly after as he remembers Pitch had just been taunting him for /his/ lack of skill with lies. Only the Guardians would tell him truly if they had known Pitch before.

Pitch continues. "But it doesn't /matter/ who spawned when, now does it? It's practically inevitable we'll end up clashing on opposite sides again. After all, despite all your efforts, /your kind/ will /never/ defeat fear."

Jack rolls his eyes at his nemisis' single-minded pettiness, though he supposes if he'd been defeated even half as soundly as Pitch Black had those many years ago, he'd still be pretty sore about it, too.

"Even if it's only yours," he quips, making the Nightmare King peel his teeth back and try to snarl. He only managed to inspire in Jack the same kind of pity he felt for caged animals at the humans' zoos. 

"Bet you can't control your /own/ fear, can you?" Jack wonders aloud before Pitch's pitiable growl could fully materialize. "And since I'm not afraid of you right now..." he continues, narrowed eyes trained on Pitch's face, "There's nothing you can really /do/ to me."

"Heh-heh-heh... Oh, but you /are/ afraid of me." Pitch stalks closer, lifting one hand to trace along Jack's jaw, making him shiver. "Look how you tremble at my touch!" 

Jack opens his eyes, unaware of having closed them. "It's not /fear/," he insists point-blank, going onto his tip-toes and lifting his own hand to Pitch's face. 

The man in black leans back, away from him, his eyes widening. Jack's hand closes and sinks slightly. 

"Oh. You're afraid of /me/," he murmurs, not thinking Pitch can hear. Pitch sneers.

"Hardly," he spits, attempting to regain his dignity. Jack is put in mind of a very rambunctious young tiger he'd observed frolicking in a zoo once. He prefers the younger animals, before they get fat and slow, or whip-cord thin and worried about nothing but food and shelter. The young ones still remember how to have /fun/. 

"Then you'd let me touch you, right? And I can /show/ you it's not fear making me shiver. Or the cold." 

Jack's /face/, so open, so interested. Pitch hasn't felt so /seen/ in /ages/. It's /intoxicating/. But the boy is wrong. He /has/ to be.

"There's nothing /but/ cold and fear when it's you and me, boy," he spits, eyes nervously flicking between Jack's slowly-rising hand and his completely guileless smile.

"Hn-hn. You old codfish," Jack taunts him almost fondly. Pitch's frown at the nickname is utterly priceless. "Have /you/ forgotten how to have fun?" 

"Bwah-wha. /Fun/?" the man in black splutters, wondering if his face is changing color. He remembers Jack's lightning-and-ice explosion that threw him to the ground, remembers his targets sailing away into the night. He remembers thinking that their upcoming battles would be /fun/. He swallows, and Jack sees it.

"Yeah," he drawls, eyes narrowing, lips peeling back from his teeth. "Say, how bout we play a game now? I'm thinking /chicken/." And with that, he lifts his hands again, narrowed eyes and tight little smile daring Pitch to back away and /lose/.

Pitch doesn't know if Jack /wants/ him to lose, to flee, to smack his hand away and bark something unkind and partially untrue. Jack looks so certain that he'll do it, too, his eyes widening as his fingers near Pitch's face. He's setting himself up for the sting of failure, the stomach-drop of sure victory snatched away at the last second. 

It isn't that Pitch wants Jack to /win/, precisely. He just wants him to stumble, to fall, to sprawl out in front of him, rolling onto his back to face him, eyes wide and lips trembling with the fear of the unknown. If he can make /Jack/ lose...

Sighing with displeasure but attempting to play it as acceptance, Pitch closes his eyes and holds himself tightly still, so as not to startle when cold fingers meet his cheek. His hands jerk but Jack isn't paying attention to them. 

His eyes stay closed, so Pitch doesn't see how Jack's lips part slowly, how wonder breaks over his face like a new dawn.

A few seconds after Jack's fingers touch his skin, Pitch begins to wonder if perhaps he has made an error in judgement. The boy shows no signs of /stopping/. Pitch's acquiescence hasn't thrown him. A sinking feeling slowly manifesting in his belly, Pitch opens his silver-gold eyes.

Jack's eyes are open, wide as a child's watching their first snowfall. He is so exquisitely vulnerable in that moment, the trails of sensation on Pitch's face echoed in his fingertips, as novel for the teen as they are for his elder. His wonder is such a /delicate/ thing. Pitch is /sure/ it will be easy to shatter. 

He lifts up his long-fingered hand and lays it on Jack's cheek. The boy in blue doesn't startle, but his eyes flutter closed. And he shivers. Pitch can feel it beneath his skin. It doesn't consciously register in his mind that Jack's skin is far warmer than he was expecting. It doesn't register /at all/ that he must have formed an opinion in the past regarding this subject, to have been /expecting/ anything in the first place.

"Hnnn," he croons, in more familiar territory with the boy before him at the mercy of his baser instincts. "And what do you call this shivering if not fear?" Jack opens his eyes again, breaths shallow and fast. 

"It's not /fear/," he insists again. 

Pitch isn't paying attention to the fact that his hand is cupping Jack's face now, that he's enjoying this phyisical contact, slight though it is, /entirely/ too much. His fingers close around Jack's throat, marveling at the pulse on either side. 

"Then what would you /call/ it, hmm, sweet child? My dear...Jack.../Frost/?" He doesn't give his eyes any explicit instruction to flash, to flare, to burn with color and fill Jack's vision, blotting out the empty echoing lair. They do so anyway. 

Jack speaks despite the fingers tightening on his throat, reminding himself that he doesn't /need/ to breathe.

"I /like/ it," he says bluntly, face carefully controlling the instinctive flash of self-hatred, of doubt. It's only after he's done a thing that he starts to realize it may not have been the best idea. He's starting to sense that he's currently edging into 'regret' territory at the moment.

But he's not lying. It /does/ feel good. And if it's a bad idea, he wants to see it through to the end, till he winds up panting and sated on the floor. 

Perhaps they'd fight. Oh, /that/ would be /quite/ a fun story to tell his believers back home. 

"I wanted to see you, hear you, talk to you. Be around you. /Touch/ you." He lets his eyes flutter closed because Pitch's hand around his neck is loosening and sliding down his front. It trails off and leaves at his chest, nowhere near where Jack wants it. 

Awkward silence reigns for a bit. 

"Guess I'd just call it /want/. Desire. Impulse. Something like that." He tries to shrug nonchalantly again, but it only looks defensive as his eyes aren't on Pitch's face. 

Pitch's face is utterly blank, uncomprehending. It twitches in spots, pulling the rest of it along into a look of disbelief. He tries to clarify, "You... /wanted/ to see.... me? To, to /touch/ me, to /hear/ me, to..." He realizes that he's not going to be /finding/ that clarity any time soon. 

Jack just nods, face almost insultingly earnest.

"Well, /yeah/. I /wanted/ it. So I /did/ it. Not complicated or anything." 

Pitch just shakes his head, unthinkingly gentle as he disengages Jack's electric-tracing hands from his face. "You have no idea what you're talking about," he sneers, not looking at Jack. 

He startles quite badly as Jack grabs his hands. He... He can't /remember/ if anyone has ever grabbed his hands like that. He stares down at Jack with an expression the teen should, by all rights, /fear/. But he doesn't. He /wants/ instead.

Jack ignores Pitch's full-body flinch at the contact and stares down at their hands, sliding his thumbs over the back of Pitch's, his lips parting slowly. 

Pitch inhales audibly, but very slowly, trying against all logic to /control/ himself, because he does not want to feel fear. He wants /out/, wants to be /safe/, wants to be powerful and /free/, not brought low by the insignificant action of thumbs tracing over his knuckles. He attempts to pull his hands away, rather half-heartedly. 

Jack glances up at him then, head still bowed over Pitch's long fingers. The illusion of a lowered brow prompts Pitch to interpret Jack's reaction as disapproving and he tries not to bite his lip. 

"Chicken?" is all Jack has to say to get Pitch to settle. The man is far more tense than he was before and Jack can feel it even in his hands.

Pitch makes an impatient sound. "Mmf. /No/," he insists despite the way his hands shake harder the longer Jack holds them.

"Uh /huh/," Jack replies brightly, thoroughly disbelieving. 

Pitch manages to peel his lips back fully this time. "I said no, you impudent /child/!" He makes an aborted movement to pull his hands back and throw Jack away by the shoulders, remembering only as Jack tightens his hold that to do so would only prove Jack right. 

The blue-eyed boy is smiling rakishly when Pitch inhales deeply and braves a glance at his face.

"Then prove it," Jack goads, the exact words Pitch had been dreading. Raging at himself for even /thinking/ of being afraid of /Jack Frost/ of all beings, Pitch forces his face to smooth out into a semblance of control.

"And how do you propose I do /that/?" He leaves his mouth open after saying it, unconsciously mirroring Jack's disturbing pose, hoping it would have the same effect on Jack as Jack's face was having on him. 

But Jack doesn't appear unsettled. If anything, his eyes light up /more/ at the flat tone and parted lips of his former nemisis. 

"Well, first of all..." Jack trails off, seemingly distracted by his sudden desire to look at all of Pitch as though he's never seen him before. Pitch tries not to gulp under the scrutiny. When his eyes flick back up and catch Pitch's, he /does/ gulp. Jack's eyes flash. 

"I think you'll want to sit down for this next part," he suggests in a tone that says it isn't a suggestion at all. 

Pitch, trying to keep his composure, raises a single eyebrow. "And where do you propose I do that? You can't mean /on the floor/, can you?" he adds more flatly when Jack glances between him and the floor with raised eyebrows.

"Why not?" Jack returns easily, "Someone not been keeping up with the vacuuming?" 

Not entirely sure what 'vacuuming' meant, having been powerless and out of commission for several centuries at least, Pitch nevertheless gathers that it has something to do with cleaning and opens his mouth to retort. 

Jack cuts him off with a tut and a sudden leap and twirl, still clasping Pitch's hands tight. "Poor old man."

He tries to reply, but his objection dissolves into a shout as Jack twirls around him, damn his powers of flight, and unbalances him into falling to the ground.

He lets go of Pitch's hands at the last second, so the older man catches himself without sustaining serious injury. He immediately scrambles to face the interloper, not comfortable with the idea of leaving his back facing the winter spirit.

A smile Pitch can't see spreads across Jack's face as the teen taps one finger against his chin and decides in a single heartbeat what his next move will be.

Pitch gasps as the teen becomes a blur and his weight, like a sack of potatoes, plunks down into his lap. His hands flutter at Jack's knees and ache to grasp the boy's face and stare into him until his deepest fears are revealed. Pitch aches to destroy him with it. 

But he doesn't look. He doesn't grasp Jack's face. His hands dig in and squeeze Jack's knees because the teen is grasping /his/ face, is searching /his/ soul with those piercingly blue eyes and Pitch is reminded of the time he asked Jack to join him. He's reminded of throwing out everything he was in an earth-shattering attack and having it /deflected/, having it turned to something as awe-inspiring as their Antarctic monument, and he realizes then that he hasn't felt that kind of /joy/, seeing their statue untouched but for the wind, in /centuries/. 

Jack's eyes widen and his lips part with a tiny sound that echoes like a firecracker in the silence. And Pitch wants to close his eyes, wants to wrench away and spit venom and /hide/, but Jack Frost is not /afraid/ as he gazes straight into his pitch-black soul. The very /least/ his sorry ass can do for this nemesis who made him feel /seen/ is to return the favor.

Shakingly, betraying his own fear, the King of Nightmares (once upon a time) lifts his bone-white fingers from the winter spirit's thighs. Slowly, so slowly, he pushes them up Jack's body, jaw dropping ever so slightly in awe as Jack's eyes droop when Pitch's fingers catch skin beneath layers of cloth. 

Pitch's legs restlessly shift beneath Jack's weight as the teen's hands slide up Pitch's arms, following their desperate trajectory, and settle, shockingly cold, atop his hands once they finally make contact with the blue-tinged cheeks. He feels like his legs are going to shake themselves right off and his next inhale folds in on itself a few times before his lungs fill. Jack feels it in his hands.

Astounded and relieved, Jack quickly turns his head and presses his lips against those long-fingered hands. His lips are warmer than Pitch expected, his breath warmer still. Pitch doesn't process the contact as a kiss. 

However, when Jack holds onto his hand and turns it over and over, separating his fingers and giving each of their backs and fronts the same lip-pressing treatment, Pitch feels his face heat up. The boy would never be able to tell, he tells himself, since his face doesn't change color like Jack's does, the way it reddens with his anger. Pitch turns his head to the side despite convincing himself of this.

Jack notices, of course, and tugs Pitch's hand back to his cheek before sliding his free hand beneath Pitch's arm and running his open palm down the taller man's back. 

The shadow-dweller gasps openly, face jerking to Jack's, ego feeling both shrunken /and/ inflated by the quick, self-satisfied smile that breaks over Jack's face like dawn. 

Neither of them can say who makes the next daring move. It is more likely that they react to each other, Jack shifting to brace himself against the wall, hands on either side of Pitch's head, Pitch's hands shooting out in self-defense, then settling naturally at the small of the other's waist. He looks up, and Jack looks down, and there is a /moment/, for a heartbeat. Then they connect. 

Pitch rumbles something uncomplimentary about the cold, or so Jack guesses from the pieces of words he lets Pitch say in between incessantly pecking and licking at the man's lips. 

"This better?" Jack murmurs in a deeper register that pulls something like magnetic fields through Pitch's body. Moments later, the pull intensifies as Jack forces open his lips with his tongue and greets him with it. 

Pitch doesn't admit that this is better. He's too busy gaping like a fish, lips twitching to find Jack's again. Taking pity on the 'old man,' Jack relaxes his rigid pose, elbows lowering and brushing Pitch's collarbones. His head tilts and the angle does something astonishing to the nerve endings of his lips, Pitch can admit that much. 

Then the teen slumps down a bit and their hips slide against each other and their bellies press together. Something so simple shouldn't be able to /do/ this to him, Pitch tries to growl through Jack's teasing kisses. And he contemplates tugging Jack's body down against him /hard/, but that would only make the buzzing, humming, electric /pulsing/ in his body /worse/, so he doesn't.

Jack takes the choice out of his hands a moment later, though, as he shifts atop Pitch with a delighted little sound. His hands slide very gently up the shadow king's neck, his fingers sliding into his hair. 

Pitch shudders at that, the fingers moving so slowly across his neck, and when he settles, his legs have fallen farther apart. Jack takes immediate advantage - of course he does, Pitch mentally rolls his eyes even as his own hands latch onto Jack's waist of their own accord - and shifts their bodies closer together, chest, belly, and thigh. 

Pitch shivers harder, his face twisting in disgust and remorse as Jack finally breaks away from his lips, very distractingly not closing them as his gaze shifts covetously over the planes of Pitch's face. Pitch has no idea what Jack could be looking at that he might find so /fascinating/, and he snarls just a little bit as he surrenders to one particular fantasy and presses Jack's hips down against him. 

He was wrong before, he decides, as Jack exhales breathily and closes his eyes. Having Jack's body pressed hard against his hips doesn't make the magnetic tugging /worse/. It makes it /better/.

Jack's utterly distracted expression doesn't falter as the teen lets his head fall onto Pitch's shoulder and nuzzles his nose against his neck the way Pitch's Nightmares used to, once upon a time. 

Wrong-footed by the resemblence, Pitch puts one hand up against the back of Jack's white-haired head and strokes. He decides he quite likes how that feels, so he continues to pet Jack's hair precisely the way he did the Nightmares, overwhelmed by the number of differences between those creatures of black Dream Sand and this boy. 

His free hand slides around to the junction of Jack's back and butt, and presses Jack closer by that fulcrum. The teen just makes it /better/ by arching his hips forward and opening his mouth against Pitch's neck. The sounds Pitch's mouth lets loose then are things even /he's/ never heard himself make.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry this ends so abruptly! T_T This happens a lot - if I spend too long on the smut-scene build-up, I have no time or energy left for the actual sex! That's why I tend to prefer PWP's - much faster.


End file.
